Teen refugees start a new life, and a new garden

Darah Hansen, Vancouver Sun03.22.2013

Tina Ksor, left, Jenny Ro’mah and Susan Siu pose for a photo at the site of their new community garden at Moberly elementary school in Vancouver. The garden is a new project funded by the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Foundation to allow the students, who are refugees, to grow their own food and connect with the land.

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The six teens gathered in the basement of Moberly elementary in south Vancouver may not have much in the way of worldly possessions, but what they have they’re willing to share.

On this particular evening, it’s slices of fresh papaya.

It’s clearly a favourite fruit, the mere mention of it inspiring an audible rise in the level of youthful energy around the table.

They like it best when the peel is a rich green and the fruit inside sour — not sticky sweet as it is often served here.

Mixed with cucumber and a pinch of tamarind, salt and chili and this is a treat like no other, they all agreed.

These kids know about food. Back home in Vietnam they would be farmers, living off the land like their fathers and mothers and generations before them.

Most of the students gathered at the school on this particular evening are old enough to recall the sweet scent of dirt on their hands earned from their work in the fields and gardens and the crisp texture of sun-dried cassava leaves on their tongues.

The memories evoke feelings of both happiness and longing. It can sometimes feel so far away and so many years ago.

“They all talk about farming a lot, more than Facebook,” said Jennifer Reddy, who, as program developer with the Vancouver school board’s Engaged Immigrant Youth Program, regularly meets with the teens as part of a broader district initiative aimed at helping struggling new immigrants and refugees find ways to connect with their schools and communities.

The program brings students and youth workers together during the lunch hour, after school and on weekends so newcomers can comfortably practise their English and develop the skills they need to navigate their way through what can be a turbulent transition into Canada.

It was during one of these sessions that the seed for a Jarai community garden was sown.

“Was it me?” asked a surprised Tina Ksor, 16, amid the giggling and finger pointing that erupts around the table as the teens try to settle on who first came up with the idea.

Ksor, like most of the students gathered here, is Jarai, an indigenous culture and language group from Vietnam and Cambodia, sometimes referred to by the old French colonial term Montignard, or “mountain people.”

Sach Ang, 15, is the one exception. She quietly explains she is Bahnar, a separate indigenous group from Vietnam.

All arrived in Canada in the last five years from refugee camps in Cambodia as part of a wave of indigenous people displaced from their traditional villages by poverty and government persecution.

Their ethnicity and history is a mystery to many in this country and they often find themselves explaining to others in Vancouver who they are and why they are here.

“We are the First Nations of Vietnam,” said Susan Siu, 16, of the kinship she feels with North American aboriginal people.

The students agree it’s been a challenge to find their place in their new home.

Never mind learning English: None had ever been to school before, nor learned to read or write.

Among their indigenous cultures, possessing the skill to grow, hunt and gather your own food is prized over books.

“It’s hard,” said Jenny Ro’mah, 15, of the disconnect she feels with Canadian values.

“Here it is school, home, sleep, eat. In Vietnam it is farming all day long, every day.”

The garden has the potential to balance both worlds.

Set to break ground April 2 at Moberly with funding from the City of Vancouver and Vancouver Foundation, it promises to yield fruits and vegetables enough to help feed several families.

For Reddy, it’s also an opportunity for the students in charge of the space to harvest essential life skills along with the crops — leadership, decision-making, and cooperation.

It’s about nurturing their “super dreams versus ‘I think I am only good enough for …,’” she said.

The students see it as a temporary escape from the frustrations of life, of feeling undervalued and misunderstand, and a chance to nurture their agricultural roots, languages and foods.

“It’s important not to lose our identity,” said Di Rolan, who, at 12, has no clear memories of life before the refugee camp and is anxious to learn all she can from her older peers.

Recently, four members of the group, Jenny Ro’mah, Tina Ksor, Susan Siu and 19-year-old Josh Rahlan, found themselves at Vancouver city hall telling the story of the garden to Mayor Gregor Robertson and council.

They spoke of their love of the food and of farming, and their eagerness to pass those traditions on to the broader community.

Reddy said she was amazed by the confidence the students displayed in such a public forum.

Two weeks later, she was delighted to hear it echoed in their responses to a reporter’s questions about what the future might hold.

Josh Rahlan works as a landscaper and attends school, but intends to go the British Columbia Institute of Technology to study plumbing or carpentry.

The girls, a few years younger than Rahlan, weren’t as certain about their career paths, but expressed a strong desire to ease the way for families like their own to settle into Canada.

“I want to go around the world and get kids in school to have an education like me,” said Di Rolan.

But not right now. Now, it’s about the papaya.

Ro’mah splits the fruit in half and scoops out its dark seeds before gently placing several slices onto a plate. She insists on serving the guest at the table first; her actions mirroring the words of a poem, her own, written out on the board at the front of the room:

“The world is small/and life is short/We hope and we love/We love and we share.”

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Teen refugees start a new life, and a new garden

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